Four-Sided Triangle

“Perfect—a beauty!” he murmured. He looked up at Joan with shining eyes. Bill caught that look, and unaccountably checked the impulsive whoop of joy he was on the point of letting loose. He coughed instead, and leaned over Joan’s shoulder to inspect ‘Madame Croignette’ more closely.

“The gamble’s come off,” went on Will. “We’ve sunk every cent into this, but it won’t be long before we have enough money to do anything we want to do-anything.”

“Anything—except to get Bill out of bed on Sunday mornings,” smiled Joan. and they laughed.

“No sensible millionaire would get out of bed any morning,” said Bill. The steel and glass factory of Art Replicas, Limited, shone like a diamond up in the green hills of Surrey. In a financial sense, it had actually sprung from a diamond—the sale of a replica of the Koh-i-noor. That had been the one and only product of Precious Stones, Limited, an earlier company which was closed down by the government when they saw that it would destroy the world’s diamond market. A sister company, Radium Products, was going strong up in the north because its scientific necessity was recognised. But the heart of the three company directors lay in Art Replicas, and there they spent their time.

Famous works of art from all over the world passed through the factory’s portals, and gave birth to innumerable replicas of themselves for distribution and sale at quite reasonable prices.

Families of only moderate means found it pleasing to have a Constable or Turner in the dining room and a Rodin statuette in the hall. And this widely-flung ownership of objets d’art, which were to all intents and purposes the genuine articles, strengthened interest in art enormously. When people had lived with these things for a little while, they began to perceive the beauty in them—for real beauty is not always obvious at a glance—and to become greedy for more knowledge of them and the men who originally conceived and shaped them.

So the three directors—Will, Bill, and Joan—put all their energy into satisfying the demands of the world for art, and conscious of their part in furthering civilisation, were deeply content.

For a time.

Then Bill, the impatient and easily-bored, broke out one day in the middle of a Directors’ Meeting.

“Oh to hell with the Ming estimates!” he cried, sweeping a pile of orders from the table.

Joan and Will, recognising the symptoms, exchanged wry glances of amusement.

“Look here,” went on Bill, “I don’t know what you two think, but I’m fed up!

We’ve become nothing but dull business people now. It isn’t our sort of life. Repetition, repetition, repetition! I’m going crazy! We’re research workers, not darned piece-workers. For heaven’s sake, let’s start out in some new line!”

This little storm relieved him, and almost immediately he smiled too.

“But, really, aren’t we?” he appealed.

“Yes,” responded Joan and Will in duet.

“Well, what about it?”

Will coughed, and prepared himself.

“Joan and I were talking about that this morning, as a matter of fact,” he said.

“We were going to suggest that we sell the factory, and retire to our old laboratory and re-equip it.”

Bill picked up the ink-pot and emptied it solemnly over the Ming estimates. The ink made a shining lake in the centre of the antique and valuable table.

“At last we’re sane again,” he said. “Now you know the line of investigation I want to open up. I’m perfectly convinced that the reason for our failure to create a living duplicate of any living creature was because the quotiety we assumed for the xy action—”

“Just a moment, Bill,” interrupted Will. “Before we get on with that work, I—I mean, one of the reasons Joan and me wanted to retire was because—well—”

“What he’s trying to say,” said Joan quietly, “is that we plan to get married and settle down for a bit before we resume research work.”

Bill stared at them. He was aware that his cheeks were slowly reddening. He felt numb.